The excitement around AI in manufacturing has reached new heights. With generative AI (GenAI) on the scene, many practical use cases for manufacturers come to light, such as streamlining sales outreach to customers and improving product demand forecasting.

Kelly Ralyea, director of solution engineering for Salesforce, said manufacturers are increasingly taking advantage of generative AI within their familiar workflows. “With a simple activation, generative AI becomes a seamless part of the processes they navigate daily across sales, service, marketing and partnership activities,” she explained.

A strategy for success: Human + AI + trusted data

One exciting AI opportunity for manufacturers that Ralyea highlighted is using conversational AI grounded in company data to access and act on intelligence quickly. This application could be used by various teams within the company, from sales and service to marketing and partnerships, to operate more efficiently. It also underscores the essential elements of a solid AI strategy for manufacturers: 

• AI and human employees working together.
• Insights driven by trusted data. 

The first point addresses one of the biggest concerns about AI: will AI eliminate human jobs? From Salesforce’s perspective, generative AI — a trusted assistant or copilot — is a helpful tool that with human oversight enables a user to be more efficient with tedious, time-consuming tasks so they can focus on the tasks requiring a human touch. By working with AI, employees can accelerate productivity, improve decision-making and increase operational efficiency. 

To the second point, the insights that AI can provide to a manufacturing team are only as good as the data used to drive them.  

“When humans can rely on insights driven by trusted data, they gain faster, more innovative ways to understand what's happening within the business,” Ralyea indicated, “So, setting up your data foundation to be able to apply AI moving forward is a critical first step.”

Improving sales and service productivity

Many manufacturers already use predictive AI for lead scoring, and generative AI takes this a step further to advance sales communications. For example, sales representatives can input data about potential leads into a conversational AI tool to draft personalized email copy based on what’s known about each lead.  

Service is another area where productivity gets a boost. Ralyea described how agents can respond to requests or issues with great speed and insight, noting that an AI assistant like Salesforce Einstein Copilot can generate a response in seconds based on data about the customer, product or issue in question.

“It’s important to note that the human expert is still in the driver’s seat with the ability to edit the response, add their own flavor or alter the action,” Ralyea noted. “But the productivity is still drastically improved by not having to dive deep into an issue every time or repeat a process unnecessarily. The result is that the agent can handle more cases than before with the help of AI, and typically with greater speed, accuracy and consistency.”

AI opportunities extend to partner relationships as well. Manufacturers can drive better engagement with their partners by using AI to notify a partner who has an unmet rebate program goal or to let them know if they are only 5% away from reaching their next growth incentive. 

“This is a great way for manufacturers to build stronger loyalty with their partners and ultimately capture more market share over the competition, while also driving better brand recognition in their markets,” Ralyea added.

Identifying opportunities based on holistic data

Automating a specific task is a powerful use case. However, Ralyea explains that salespeople can also use an AI copilot when they aren’t sure what task or opportunity to prioritize. The AI copilot provides a suggestion based on broader account information, recent news and historical data. 

“For example, you could ask the copilot, ‘What is my top opportunity today?’,” Ralyea said. “The AI assistant can look across all the data on hand to give you very targeted recommendations and actions you can take to move an opportunity forward.”

Similarly, the AI copilot is invaluable for managing contracts, where important details can be missed due to the complexity. By asking the copilot, 'Are there any missed opportunities or issues with this contract?' a salesperson can leverage its ability to quickly analyze extensive data and uncover missed opportunities. This ensures that no critical aspect is overlooked, from verifying the quantity of product agreed upon to aligning these figures with revenue.

Detecting trends and improving forecasting

Using predictive and generative AI together enables manufacturing teams to identify product and purchase trends, respond with intelligence and workflows, and then apply those insights to future troubleshooting. 

Ralyea gave the example of detecting trends around a product defect, identifying the root cause and then using generative AI to create clear instructions that can live in a knowledge base. 

“By monitoring requests and responses,” Ralyea said, “you can get to these issues quicker, solve the problem and create dynamic work instructions that make it easier for every single rep to follow consistent troubleshooting instructions moving forward.”

Optimizing inventory is another area where human-AI collaboration shines. The AI assistant may alert a sales representative that inventory is backed up due to low demand for a particular product. The user can then ask the AI assistant for customers most likely to purchase the product — and then request campaign ideas and talking points that would appeal to that customer. 

The other side of this coin is that campaign responses and buying behaviors can then inform demand forecasting. Generative AI can recommend that you stop or slow the production of a particular product due to decreased demand or slowing customer requests.

“More precise demand forecasting is a powerful use case that can result from having good analytics and data and translating those insights into productive business outcomes,” Ralyea explained. 

Experience the power of human-AI collaboration

The potential of human-AI collaboration, fueled by trustworthy data, is immense. While AI can identify and propose solutions, humans remain essential in crafting the final decisions. This collaborative approach not only enhances analytics and productivity but also fosters innovation.

Integrating and harmonizing your data can help you improve your manufacturing processes and prepare you for the AI-powered future. Learn how to prepare your data for AI in this blog from Salesforce.